Marci cho, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to talk about the long-term care in Hay River. I would like to ask the Minister if there are protocols in place when there is an incident, a protocol in place that staff have to follow?
Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I indicated previously, when an incident does occur within any of our long-term care facilities, the immediate measures are taken to ensure the residents and staff are safe, such as separating the residents and removing other residents and staff from the area where the incident might be taking place, and doing what we can with the residents themselves to make sure that the altercation is ended as quickly as possible.
I would like to ask the Minister if staff are trained to deal with reports. When there is an incident in a long-term care facility, what type of training do staff have in order to deal with it to ensure that they are dealing with the incident appropriately?
The training varies across the Northwest Territories depending on the type of training or support that individual authorities pre-transformation had established. We are looking to try to obviously standardize some training to make sure that all long-term care facilities have training that is both adequate, timely, and effective. As an example, there is a three-day training that has been available in Fort Smith called P.I.E.C.E.S. P.I.E.C.E.S is an approach to a multidisciplinary team to understand enhanced care for individuals with physical and/or cognitive mental health issues that have behaviour changes, and how they can work together with the clients, with the facility, work together with their team members to ensure that, as they change, as they age, that the staff are on top of it and aware of incidents that may come up. So there is training that we're trying to standardize, trying to make sure that all of our staff have consistent training across the system.
In the long-term care here in Yellowknife, there are two separate areas for individuals that have dementia and others that do not. I would like to ask the Minister if there is such a separation in Woodland Manor, where people with dementia are separated from people that do not have dementia?
We only have only one dementia facility in the Northwest Territories, and that is the facility in Yellowknife. Individuals with dementia have a higher need and a higher requirement for support than individuals in long-term care who may have early-onset Alzheimer's or some level of minor dementia but not extreme dementia. Individuals with dementia, we try to get into the long-term or the dementia facility here in Yellowknife, but as the Member knows, as all Members know, we have a shortage of beds in the Northwest Territories. We are trying to come up with a plan to increase the number of beds across the Northwest Territories for long-term care, including addressing some of the shortages we're going to experience in dementia care or beds moving forward.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask the Minister if there is a way that individuals with dementia are separated from people without dementia? In incidents such as this, individuals with dementia are mixed in with individuals that do not have dementia. I would like to ask the Minister, if physically they cannot be separated, then is there some sort of plan or protocol, or whatever we wish to call it, in place that keeps people with dementia away from individuals that do not have dementia?
Individuals within our long-term care facilities have a wide range of different challenges. As I indicated previously, we do an assessment of each individual to identify their needs and their specific needs and develop personal care plans based on the individual's needs. Having said that, in our new facilities we have a lot more structures built into the buildings themselves so that we can isolate different areas and keep individuals, whether they have dementia or not, separated from each other when there are issues, when there is a risk of violence.
So our new facilities do have the ability to do exactly what the Member is discussing. As a note, we are currently moving forward with the construction of an expansion to Woodland Manor which will be a current and modern facility, with all the structures in place that exist within all of our current modern long-term care facilities. So that new expansion will have the ability to do exactly what the Member is discussing, as does our new facility in Behchoko, as does our new facility in Norman Wells, and more modern facilities such as the dementia centres that have been built over the years. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
